Episode 100 – Share deep content and revisit the history of your mission.

My guest on the show today is Rufaro Matombo. He is an experienced and versatile digital content manager with an...

The post Episode 100 – Share deep content and revisit the history of your mission. appeared first on Sideways8.

My guest on the show today is Rufaro Matombo. He is an experienced and versatile digital content manager with an extensive background in broadcast production, developing digital marketing strategies, strategic initiatives towards fundraising and brand management. His work history includes digital production towards the hip-hop podcast, The Combat Jack Show, brand awareness with iconic radio station, Hot 97 and 107.5 FM WBLS, and digital marketing and development for the Kips Bay Boys & Girls Club.

Adam: [00:00:09] Hi, and welcome to the Good People, Good Marketing Podcast, a podcast about digital marketing and how to make it better so the good people and good organizations can have good marketing as well. I’m your host, Adam Walker, co-founder of Sideways8, a digital marketing agency and 48in48, a nonprofit dedicated to hosting events that build forty-eight websites for forty-eight nonprofits in forty-eight hours.

[00:00:29] My guest on the show today is Rufaro Matombo. He is an experienced and versatile digital content manager with an extensive background in broadcast production, developing digital marketing strategies, strategic initiatives towards fundraising and brand management. His work history includes digital production towards the hip-hop podcast, The Combat Jack Show, brand awareness with iconic radio station, Hot 97 and 107.5 FM WBLS, and digital marketing and development for the Kips Bay Boys & Girls Club. Rufaro was born in Zimbabwe and raised in New York City. Rufaro, welcome to the show.

Rufaro: [00:01:07] Well, I’m so excited to be here. Thanks for having me, Adam.

Adam: [00:01:09] Man, I love your background. It’s very diverse. It’s kind of fun. You’re working with hip-hop podcasts and radio stations and then Boys & Girls club. It’s awesome.

Rufaro: [00:01:19] Thank you so much. It’s a combination of being with the music industry now with the kids.

Adam: [00:01:26] Yeah, yeah well that’s great. Working with kids is really fun. Somewhat challenging and really fun, so I applaud you for that. I’m excited to hear what you have to say. So let’s dive right in. Question number one. Related to digital marketing, can you tell us something that has worked well for you?

Rufaro: [00:01:43] What works well for me with the Kips Bay Boys & Girls Club specifically is the fact that we have a really deep history when it comes to performing arts and our athletics. So what I try to tailor a lot of the content that we have and what we market specifically speaks to those programs. So for example, just yesterday a bunch of our kids met Kerry Washington while performing the American Son at the Booth Theater. And you know, of course that’s going to be on our performing arts web page, our website, our Facebook page and Instagram page and thankfully we really don’t pay for any of our posts, but because a lot of our organic posts, we have a lot of success with that because we have a huge digital support and supporters and a lot of people who engage with us. So to answer your question, what has been working well for us is just really the organic posting on social media and just really everything that we do in-house (inaudible 00:00:30) high engagement.

Adam: [00:03:01] So just basically tying in what you do naturally and letting that overflow into social is what’s working for you, right? It’s kind of that natural overflow, right?

Rufaro: [00:03:12] That is correct, yup.

Adam: [00:03:12] And I think it just takes— I mean, in my experience at least, and I don’t want to put words into your mouth, but I feel like a lot of nonprofits have that organic content that they could post and probably should, but don’t. And so I think it just takes this intentionality to make sure that what’s happening within the organization then overflows into social. Would you agree with that?

Rufaro: [00:03:30] 100% because it’s always a challenge for— I mean if we’re going to be very honest, nonprofits don’t necessarily have or at least low-level to mid-level nonprofits don’t really have a marketing department. They just have a person who does development, communications, special events kind of all in one so I’m in a very fortunate situation where my job title literally is Social Media and Website Manager. We can focus on these things and hone in because I mean, within the digital world, we can really speak, as far as likes and engagements and interaction and posts and how that pertains to that, but the generation in the nonprofit world don’t necessarily know how does that work and how can that work for the nonprofits overall mission. But Kips Bay find a way to make it work.

Adam: [00:04:22] Yeah, yeah that’s great. That’s great. I love that and I love how you think about that as far as just letting it overflow into what you’re doing. All right, so question number two. Related to digital marketing, can you tell us something that has not worked well that we can learn from?

Rufaro: [00:04:36] Yeah, because we learn a lot from our failures. I think what hasn’t worked for us is Twitter and I think a lot of nonprofits probably struggle with that. Twitter has just been a place where— I mean Twitter is a place where you just need to be on it all the time and you need to be able to develop that personality. So if Kanye West is tweeting something that’s ridiculous, you’re able to respond, kind of like what Burger King does when Kanye says he loves McDonald’s or somebody says something in regards to anything that will affect policy when it comes to after-school programming. I know that was a big thing last year when Trump came into office on how we can have a Twitter voice, but Twitter, that’s also been a huge challenge for us.

Adam: [00:05:29] Yeah, I totally get that. I feel like Instagram is relatively easy to keep up with. Facebook’s relatively easy to keep up with. Twitter, it just requires this degree of hands-on-ness, not that that’s a real word, but you know what I mean? It’s like this degree of attention that’s just really difficult to give I think, especially for nonprofit.

Rufaro: [00:05:49] Exactly.

Adam: [00:05:50] Yeah, that’s fascinating. I’m glad that I’m not the only one that has that same feel— I feel like Twitter gets a lot of love, at least for my nonprofit during an event. We do a lot of tweeting about the event and posts and hashtags and everything else and then everything in between all the events, it just goes dark.

Rufaro: [00:06:06] And that’s also the challenge too because it’s like, how do you want your Twitter page to look when you’re not doing an event and that’s important, especially when you have people who are going to have eyes on you when you’re not looking. And it’s absolutely terrible when you haven’t tweeted in a day or two because typically you don’t end up being on people’s timelines.

Adam: [00:06:30] Right, right, yeah. Out of sight and out of mind. That’s what tends to happen on Twitter all the time.

Rufaro: [00:06:35] Yup.

Adam: [00:06:35] I totally get that. Alright, question number three—love this one—related to digital marketing, can you tell us something that you are excited about?

Rufaro: [00:06:44] Are you talking about personally or just in general when it comes …?

Adam: [00:06:48] Either one, whatever you’re excited about. I want to hear about it.

Rufaro: [00:06:51] When it comes to social media, I love engagement, like I love creating content or sharing content that creates a conversation. So during the summertime, I had a throwback Thursday series for Kips Bay because we have a pretty deep history when it comes to the Bronx and I mean I’m talking about sharing pictures from when Jennifer Lopez was a club member dating back to the 1950’s in the Bronx. Kind of tells a story of our history and how people from literally our first club members and early club members when there was the Kips Bay Boys Club, instead of it being a Boys & Girls Club, which it is now, that people are really still discussing it and remembering those moments and how now, like I was just telling you earlier that we have new members who just met Kerry Washington last night where almost thirty to forty years from now they’re going to be talking about it like, “Remember that time?” and it’ll be somewhere in a throwback Thursday (inaudible 00:07:57).

Adam: [00:08:00] Right, I love that. I mean, being able to share deep content, deep stories and really go back and revisit the history of what you’ve been about for so long is really a critical part of marketing. I’m really excited that you’re able to do that and a lot of nonprofits forget to do that. I’m glad you’re taking that opportunity.

Rufaro: [00:08:17] Yeah, and I think that’s always a challenge because a nonprofit, you want to be able to put what’s happening, this digital placement, but you want—at least I want—people to engage with it the same way you would like the news. You want to be engaged with it and how it affects the community and things that are happening around us.

Adam: [00:08:41] That’s right, that’s right. Well, Rufaro, let me see if I can recap what we’ve learned so far in our conversation. For question number one, what has worked well for you, you said you’ve got a deep history in performing arts and athletics and so you’re able to tailor content to those programs and essentially what we talked about there is that what you’re doing sort of organically bubbles up and spills over into social media, but it takes intentionality to do that. And so really what you’re really doing is just posting what’s already there, what’s already happening, but you’re being intentional to really share that across multiple platforms to get people engaged with what’s going on.

[00:09:33] For question number two, related to digital marketing what has not worked well that we can learn from, you said Twitter’s just been tough. It just requires a lot of engagement, it requires a lot of time spent on the platform and it’s just much more difficult to manage than say a Facebook or an Instagram and I very, very much agree with you on that. It’s a challenging platform from a time perspective.

[00:09:38] And then question number three, what are you excited about, you mentioned engagement, just intentionally creating and sharing content that creates and fosters conversation and being able to dialogue with consumers about your brand and what you have going on and the stories that you’re sharing.

[00:09:57] So I love all that. It’s really some fantastic stuff. Did that about cover it and did you have anything else you wanted to share with us?

Rufaro: [00:10:05] No, it was an absolute pleasure talking with you and of course meeting with you about this so I look forward to the finished product and how it looks and how I sound.

Adam: [00:10:15] Yeah, we sound great. You sound really smart, man. I love it. I love it so this is good. Well, Rufaro, thanks for being on the show, man. I really enjoyed having you.

Rufaro: [00:10:24] Adam, thank you for inviting me.

Adam: [00:10:27] Thanks for listening to the Good People, Good Marketing Podcast. To get more resources about digital marketing, make sure to go to goodpeoplegoodmarketing.com where you can find more podcasts, blogs, and other fun resources. Also, if you want to find me, your host, you can find me on Twitter @ajwalker and on my blog at adamjwalker.com, where I blog about leadership productivity, habit building, and the craziness of having five kids. Thanks, and tune in next time.

The post Episode 100 – Share deep content and revisit the history of your mission. appeared first on Sideways8.